Museums in dire straits forced to sell treasure to raise funds

It is a desperate state of affairs when museums and art galleries sell outstanding works of art in order to raise funds. It is even worse, perhaps, when they do so because they no longer want them. Next month, on 5 June, Sotheby’s New York is offering some 25 classical carpets on behalf of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, which includes what the auction house describes as ‘one of the most important and revered carpets in the world’. No one taking the trouble to contemplate the 17th-century Isfahan ‘Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet’ (right) for more than a minute could fail to be entranced by it, or to recognise that this most beautiful and astonishingly complex of textiles is a remarkable work of art. That is, in one sense, precisely why it is being sold.

Such a sale is alarming for several reasons, not least because it may represent just the tip of an iceberg.